Predictions of Christopher Love, Part 4
Strange and Remarkable Prophecies and Predictions, Of the Holy, Learned, and Excellent JAMES USHER, Late Lord Bishop of ARMAGH, And Lord Primate of IRELAND: Giving an Account of his Foretelling.
I. The Rebellion in Ireland forty Years before it came to pass.
II. The Confusions and Miseries of England in Church and State.
III. The Death of King Charles the First.
IV. His own Poverty and Want.
V. The Divisions in England in Matters of Religion.
Lastly, of great and terrible Persecutions which shall fall upon the Reformed Churches by the Papists, wherein the Pope should be chiefly concerned.
Written by the Person who heard it from this excellent Man's own Mouth, and now published e…rnestly to persuade us to that Repentance and Reformation which can only prevent our ruin and Destruction.
And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham the Thing which I do?
Gen. xviii. 17.
Strange and Remarkable PREDICTIONS Of that Holy, Learned, and Excellent Bishop JAMES USHER, Late Lord Primate of IRELAND.
THE Author of the Life of this excellent and worthy Primate and Archbishop, gives an Account that, among other extraordinary Gifts and Graces, which it pleased the Almighty to bestow upon him, he was wonderfully endued with a Spirit of Prophecy, whereby he gave out several true Predictions and Prophecies of Things a great while before they came to pass, whereof some we have seen fulfilled, and others remain y…t to be accomplished. And though he was one that abhorred Enthusiastic Notions, being too learn…d, rational, and knowing, to admit of such idle Freaks and Whimsies: Yet he professed, That several Times in his Life he had many Things, impressed upon his Mind concerning future Events, with so much Warmness and Importunity, that he was not able to keep them secret, but lay under an unavoidable Necessity to make them known.
From which Spirit he foretold the Irish Rebellion forty Years before it came to pass, with the very Time when it should break forth, in a Sermon preached in Dublin in 1601, where, from Ezek. iv. 6, discoursing concerning the Prophets bearing the Iniquity of Iudah forty Days, the Lord therein appointed a Day for a Year: He made this direct Application in relation to the Connivance at Popery at that Time. From this Year (says he) will I reckon the Sin of Ireland, that those whom you now embrace, shall be your R…in, and you shall bear this …niquity. Which Prediction proved exactly true, for from that Time 1601, to the Year 1641, was just forty Years, in which it is notoriously known, that the Rebellion and Destruction of Ireland happened, which was acted by those Popish Priests, and other Papists, which were then connived at. And of this Sermon the Bishop reserved the Notes, and put a Note thereof in the Margin of his Bible; and for twenty years before, he still lived in the Expectation of the fulfilling thereof; and the nearer the Time was, the more confident he was that it was near Accomplishment, though there was no visible Appearance of any such Thing; and, (says Dr. Bernard) the Year before the Rebellion broke forth, the Bishop taking his Leave of me, being then going from Ireland to England, he advised me to a serious Preparation, for I should see heavy Sorrows and Miseries before I saw him again, which he delivered with as great Confidence as if he had seen it with his Eyes; which seems to verify that of the Prophet, Amos iii. 7. Surely the Lord will do nothing, but he will reveal it to his Servants, the Prophets.
From this Spirit of Prophecy, he foresaw the Changes and Miseries of England in Church and State; for having in one of his Books, called De Prim. Eccl. Brit. given a large Account of the Destruction of the Church and State of the Britons, by the Saxons, about …50 Years after Christ: He gives this among …ther Reasons, why he insisted so largely upon …; that he foresaw, that a like Judgment was …et behind if timely Repentance and Reforma…on did not prevent it; and he would often …ourn upon the Foresight of this long before it …ame.
From this Spirit he gave mournful Intima…ons of the Death of our Sovereign Charles the …, of whom he would be often speaking … Fear and Trembling, even when the King … the greatest Success; and would therefore … pray, and gave all Advice possible … prevent any such Thing.
From this Spirit he foresaw his own Poverty in worldly Things; and this he would often speak … with Admiration to the Hearers; when he was in his greatest Prosperity, which the Event did most certainly verify.
From this Spirit he predicted the Divisions and Con…usions in England in Matters of Religion, and the sad Consequences thereof; some of which we have seen fulfilled; and I pray God, the rest which he feared may not also be accomplished upon us.
Lastly, From this Spirit he foretold, That the grea…st Stroke upon the Reformed Church…s was yet to come; and that the Time of the utter Ruin of the See of Rome should be whe… she thought herself most secure: And as to thi… last, I shall add a brief Account … the Person's own Hand who was concerned therein which followeth in these Words:
The Year before this Learned and Holy Primate Archbishop Usher, died, I went to him, an… earnestly desired him, to give me in Writing his Apprehensions concerning Justification, an Sancti…ication by Christ: because I had for merly heard …im preach upon those Point… wherein he seemed to make those great Mysteries more intelligible to my mean Capacity, tha… any thing which I had ever heard from … other: But because I had but an imperfect … confused Remembrance of the Particulars, took the Boldness to importune him, that … would please to give a brief Account of them … Writing, whereby I might the better impri… them in my Memory; of which he would … have excused himself, by declaring his … of not writing any more; adding, That if he did write any thing it should not exceed above a Sheet or two: But upon my continued Importunity, I at last obtained his Promise.
He coming to Town some Time after, was pleased to give me a Visit at my own House where I failed not to challenge the Benefit of the Promise he had made me: He replied, That he had not writ, and yet he could not charge himself with any Breach of Promise; For (said he) I did begin to write, but when I came to write of Sanctification, that is, of the New Creature which God formeth by his Spirit in every Soul which he doth truly regenerate, I found so little of it wrought in myself, that I could speak of it only as Parrots by Rote, and without the Knowledge and Understanding of what I might have expressed, and therefore I durst not presume to proceed any further upon it.
And when I seemed to sta…d amazed, to hear such an humble Confession from so great and experienced a Christian, He added, I must tell you, We do not well understand what Sanctification and the New Creature are; It is no less than for a Man to be brought to an entire Resignation of his Will to the Will of God, and to live in the Offering up of his Soul continually in the Flames of Love, as a whole burnt Offering to Christ; and how little (says he) are many of those who profess Christianity experimentally acquainted with this Work on their Souls?
By this Discourse, I conceived he had very excellently and clearly discovered to me that par… of Sanctification which he was unwilling to write.
I then presumed to enquire of him what his present Apprehensions were concerning a very great Persecution which should fall upon the Church of God in these Nations of England, Scotland, and Ireland, of which this reverend Primate had spoken with great Confidence many Years before, when we were in the highest and fullest State of outward Peace and Settlement. I asked him whether he did believe those sad Times to be past, or that they were yet to come? To which he answered, That they were yet to come, and that he did as confidently expect i… as ever he had done, adding, That this sad per…ecution would fall upon all the Protestan… Churches of Europe; I replied, That I did hope it might have been past as to these Nations of ours, since I thought that th…ugh we, who are the People thereof, have been punished much less than our Sins have deserved, and that our late Wars had made far less Devastations than War commonly brings upon those Countries where it pleaseth God in Judgment to suffer it; yet we must needs acknowledge, that many great Houses had been burnt, ruined, and left without Inhabitants, many great Families impoverished and undone, and many Thousand Lives also had been lost in that bloody War, and that Ireland and Scotland, as well as England, had drank very deep of the Cup of God's Anger, even to the Overthrow of the Government, and the utter Desolation almost of a very great Part of those Countries.
But this Holy Man turning to me, and fixing his eyes upon me with that serious and ireful look which he usually had when he spake God's Word, and not his own, and when the Power of God seemed to be upon him, and to constrain… him to speak, which I could easily discern much to differ from the countenance wherewith he usually spake to me; He said thus:
Fool not yourself with such hopes, for I tell you all you have yet seen, hath been but the beginning of Sorrows to what is yet to come upon the Protestant Churches of Christ, who will, ere long, fall under a sharper persecution than ever yet was upon them; and therefore (said he to me) look you be not found in the outward Court, but a Worshiper in the Temple before the Altar, for Christ will measure all those that profess his name, and call themselves his People; and the outward Worshippers he will leave out to be trodden down by the Gentiles. The outward Court (says he) is the formal Christian, whose Religion lies in performing the outside duties of Christianity, without having an inward Life and Power of Faith and Love, uniting them to Christ, and these God will leave to be trodden down, and swept away by the Gentiles; but the Worshippers within the Temple, and before the Altar, are those who do indeed worship God in spirit and in truth, whose souls are made his Temples, and he is honoured and adored in the most inward Thoughts of their Hearts, and they sacrifice their lusts and vile affections, yea, and their own wills to him; and these God will hide in the hollow of his hand, and under the shadow of his wings; and this shall be one great diffe…nce between this last, and all the other preceding Persecutions; for in the former, the most eminent and spiritual Ministers and Christians did generally … most, and were most v…olently fallen upon, but in this last Persecuti… these shall be preserved by God as a Seed to p…rtake of that glory which shall immediately fo…ow and come upon the Church, as soon as eve… this storm shall be over; for as it shall be the …arpest, so it shall be the short…st Persecution … them all, and sha…l only take away the gross …ypocrites and formal Professors, but the … spiritual Believers shall be preserved till … calamity be ….
I then asked him by what means or instruments this great trial was to be brought on? …e answered, by the Papists; I replied, that it … to me very improbable they should be able to do it, since they were now little countenan…ed, and … in these nations, and that the hea…s o… the People were m…re set against … than eve… … the Reformation. He … again, That it would be by the hands of Pa…is…s, in a time when they would be in gr…at power, and in the way of a sudden …, and that the Pope should be the chief instrument of it.
All this he spake with so great assurance, and with the same serious and concerned … which I have before observed him to have, when I have heard him foretel some things which in all human appearance were very unlikely to come to pass, which yet I myself have lived to see happen according to his prediction, and this made me give the more earnest attention to what he then uttered.
He then added, That the Pa…ists were th… Gentiles spoken of in the 11th of the Revelations, to whom the outward Court should be left, that they might tread it under foot, they having received the Gentiles worship in their adoring Images, and Saints departed, and in taking to themselves many Mediators; and this (said he) the Papists are always designing among themselves, therefore be sure you be ready▪ and not found wanting.
This was the substance, and, I think, for the greatest part, the very same words which this Holy Man spake to me at the time before mentioned, not long before his death, and which I writ down, that so great and notable a prediction might not b…-lost and forgotten by myself nor others.
This gracious man repeated the same things in substaace to his only daughter the Lady Tyr…il, and that with many tears, and much about the same time that he had expressed what is aforesaid to me, and which the Lady Tyrril assured me of with her own m…uth to this purpose:
That opening the Door of his Chamber, she found him with his Eyes lift up to Heaven, and the Tears running apace down his Cheeks, and … continued for about half an Hour, not taking the least Notice of her, though she came into the Room; but at last turning to her, he told her, That his Thoughts had been taken up about the Miseries and Persecutions that were coming upon the Churches of Christ, which would be so sharp and bitter, that the Contemplation of them had fetched those Tears from his Eyes.
The same Things he also repeated to the Lady Bysse, wife to the then present Lord Chief Baron of Ireland, but with adding this circumstance, wo unto them that are found unprepared for it.
…o conclude in the words of Dr. Bernard, speaking of this excellent person, Now howsoever I may be as far from heeding of Prophe…cies this way as any, yet with me it is not improbable, that so great a Prophet, so sanctified from his youth, so knowing and eminent throughout the Universal Church, might have at some special times more than ordinary motions and impulses in doing the Watchman's part of giving warning of judgments approaching.